Siemens Gamesa launches a ship that uses hydrogen for its offshore wind

Since the steamboat, maritime mobility has left a dark trail of fossil fuels that, without hesitation, has stained the health of the oceans black. Just a few decades ago, no one noticed the damage caused and it was unimaginable a green future for navigation as it was in the past, jumping from boat to boat from caravels, galleons, ships, schooners, corvettes and frigates.

Siemens Gamesa has focused its efforts on combining technology and sustainability since its inception. Yesterday it strengthened its commitment by announcing the launch of a maintenance vessel for your offshore wind projects capable of running on green hydrogen, considered by many experts the key fuel of the energy transition.

REM Energy, the name given to the ship, has batteries up to 12 megawatts that reduce the demand for energy during the time it is in operation. The Norwegian shipyard Green Yard Kleven premiered it on December 3 and for 4 years it has been contracted by the renewables firm. Likewise, the base port for service operations is at Bremerhaven (Germany) and serves offshore wind farms Global Tech 1 y Trianel Borkum West.

However, many times the speed of business initiatives in environmental matters exceeds administrative and legal adaptation. And it is precisely this barrier that now hinders Siemens Gamesa’s path, since the ship will run on efficient diesel generators until a renewable hydrogen infrastructure is established in the Germanic country.

Design and safety

The maintenance vessel has a length of almost 90 meters and a beam of about 20 meters. It will be the workplace of up 75 service technicians offshore and a total of 24 crew members.

To ensure greater safety, it has impellers capable of rotating 360 degrees around the vertical axis, which facilitates the navigation between wind turbines. It also has a gangway that compensates for the movements generated by the waves and that allows the technicians to move from the ship to the wind turbine.

The latter will live on board and work in shifts. The company’s crew, meanwhile, will rotate every 14 days, while REM Energy itself will be able to operate at sea for more than a month before having to return to port.

Taxis that use hydrogen

Siemens Gamesa’s commitment to green hydrogen is very clear. In fact, it has a whitepaper (White book), How to Power the Green Hydrogen Revolution, in which it outlines an ambitious plan for the industry to be able to supply green hydrogen competitively in 2030 from onshore wind energy and in 2035 from offshore wind.

Proof of this is that it has already developed the first project in the world capable of produce renewable hydrogen directly from the wind and without connection to the network. It is a wind turbine that directly feeds an electrolyzer, that is, the machine that divides water into its two components (hydrogen and oxygen). The project, located in Brande (Denmark), will be distributed by Everfuel, which has a fleet of vehicles to distribute this gas and a fleet of taxis that will use it as fuel.

Green hydrogen is a focus of interest for investment and has already been consolidated as a key part of the European Union’s strategy. It is a resource capable of substituting fossil fuels and leaving behind that polluting trail associated with ships. Although very different from what it was in the past, today sustainable maritime transport is a reality.